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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571923">Just the Ghost by your Side</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkIdeas/pseuds/PatchworkIdeas'>PatchworkIdeas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>WinterFRE 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Hobbit - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Curses, Gen, Love Prevails, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:56:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkIdeas/pseuds/PatchworkIdeas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kili is recaptured during the Mirkwood escape. Fili won't rest until they are united again.<br/>(Together and apart are two sides of the same coin, when curses get in the way.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fíli/Kíli (Tolkien)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>WinterFRE 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604650</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>GatheringFiKi - Winter FRE 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Just the Ghost by your Side</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Prompt Nr. 19:<br/>"Tell him that I miss him…” They have been cursed, and can’t see or hear each other.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“The White Gems against my brother.”</p><p>It had been a good, if desperate plan.<br/>
It had worked once, with the Arkenstone, so Fili had hope, regardless of how high the personal cost would be.<br/>
“I thank you for returning what was stolen from me, but I cannot give you what is mine no longer.”<br/>
“Are you saying Kili died? While under your care?”<br/>
“By law, an escaped prisoner belongs to the one who catches him. They took a liking to him. There will be nothing left of your brother by now.”</p><p>They were the same words Thorin said, when Fili demanded they try to get Kili back, whatever the cost.<br/>
“If Thandruil hasn’t brought him to buy my jewels with, then there is nothing left to barter.”</p><p>It had been Thorin who insisted they move on.<br/>
Thorin who convinced him that only the riches in Erebor would be enough to reclaim Kili, caught again during their mad escape, when he pulled the lever but was recaptured for his bravery.<br/>
Thorin who had said they would only be caught if they tried to free him then and there.<br/>
Thorin who thought of nothing but that lonely mountain, obsessed over it for years, dragon sickness always there just never as noticeable as it had become these last days.<br/>
The others rejoiced that Thorin had cured himself before the battle they barely survived.<br/>
Fili didn’t believe it.<br/>
Didn’t believe any of it.<br/>
He would do what he should have done from the very beginning.<br/>
He would get his brother back, or he would die trying.</p><p>-</p><p>“I need your help.”</p><p>“This is about Kili, isn’t it?”</p><p>Bilbo always was a smart one.</p><p>“I’m sorry I have to ask this of you, especially after everything you already did and endured for us, but you know those halls – and you got us out. Please, I already tried everything under my own powers short of uselessly storming the place myself. I need to save him, and I can’t do it alone.”</p><p>“Fili...”</p><p>“If you won’t do it for the friendship we had before this, then tell me your price and I will spent my life paying it.”</p><p>They both knew he had nothing, not after losing the gems to the elves. There was no place among the mountain for him anymore. Thorin might call him blood traitor, but Fili wouldn’t betray his actual blood, flowing red, not gold, through his veins.</p><p>“Just burgle me back my brother.”</p><p>-</p><p>There was no joyful reunion like he had hoped.<br/>
Kili looked exhausted, barely able to stand, stumbling along behind Bilbo.<br/>
Fili held his brother up, but the weight never fell, never leaned against him.<br/>
Kili never reacted at all.</p><p>Kili couldn’t see him; couldn’t hear him; couldn’t feel him.</p><p>It was as if Fili was the ghost, and not his brother; pale, terrified and so hopelessly alone, certain that no dwarf would ever come for him.<br/>
Bilbo tried to tell Kili the truth - that Fili was right there - but Kili wouldn’t, couldn’t listen. His brother begged Bilbo to stop; begged Bilbo to stop talking about a dwarf that would never come, that had proven he hadn’t cared for Kili, had forgotten him the moment he was out of sight.<br/>
Eventually, Fili stopped asking Bilbo to convey his words to his brother, sick of the poison that had been poured into Kili’s ears. Nothing seemed to convince Kili that Fili was by his side, no matter who talked to him or what they tried. Even Gandalf just mournfully shook his head.<br/>
Words wouldn’t break through this curse.<br/>
Actions spoke louder anyway. </p><p>-</p><p>“I need your help.”</p><p>It was a gamble. He and Bilbo had stolen Kili from the Woodland elves. There was no certainty that the Rivendell elves wouldn’t just capture them and return them to their kin; especially with how ill behaved the brothers had been the first time they met Elrond’s people.  For the first time in their lives, they had not only been allowed to misbehave, but actually encouraged to - and they had used it.<br/>
Yet, the elves were his only chance.</p><p>Fili bowed low, no price too high for a chance to remove the curse that laid upon his brother, upon the one being in existence that meant everything to him.</p><p>“You may stay, but while we will do our best to heal him, I fear breaking this curse may be beyond our power.”</p><p>-</p><p>(Fili wept; all composure long forgotten, long discarded.<br/>
Fili lost a little more of his light everyday that Kili regained his own; everyday that passed without Kili noticing his desperate companion.<br/>
Kili healed. Kili learned to laugh again. Kili learned to live without Fili.<br/>
Fili didn’t care about the cost, he would stay by his brother’s side.<br/>
Even if it made him a ghost in truth.)</p><p>-</p><p>Kili was healed, restless, and sick of staying with elves, even kind ones, for a moment longer than he had to.<br/>
Still, he had nowhere to go, according to his late night ramblings when he thought he was alone.<br/>
Kili rambled often, behind closed doors.<br/>
Fili listened, and wept, and promised not to leave.<br/>
Kili didn’t hear him.</p><p>-</p><p>Bilbo visited them in Rivendell just a few month later, desperate for news about his friends.<br/>
Kili begged to leave with him. He would make himself useful, he promised, but he was so sick of elves and being reminded everyday.<br/>
He couldn’t return to the mountain; to any mountain.<br/>
He didn’t want to see any dwarf ever again.</p><p>Bilbo was already Mad Baggins of the Shire for his adventure; what difference did two grief-mad dwarves living with him make?</p><p>-</p><p>“I miss Fili.”<br/>
Words spoken in front of the fire. Years in the making, two pairs of ears listening, though spoken for just one.</p><p>“I miss you, too, Kili.” And, because it deserved saying, even if it wasn’t heard by the one who it was for, even if he had waited and hoped and would never leave, even now when that hope was long gone; it deserved saying, even if he would never get an answer. The words had been stuck on his tongue for too long already.<br/>
He had given his all to his brother a long time ago.<br/>
He regretted a lot of things.<br/>
This wasn’t one of them.<br/>
“I love you. I’ll always love you. You are the one for me and I’ll stay by your side until we will walk Mahal’s halls together, in-”</p><p>And Kili was in his arms, of his own volition, clinging to Fili’s frame as if he would disappear if Kili let go.</p><p>“Fili?” a whisper, unbelieving, scared, confused, but oh so hopeful. “Are you real? Have I gone mad? If I have gone mad, please don’t wake me. Please don’t leave me.”<br/>
And Fili wouldn’t, never again.</p><p>-</p><p>“There is nothing love can’t cure,” Gandalf told them, years later when he finally visited again.</p><p>“And you couldn’t have told me that while we traveled together?”</p><p>“It wouldn’t have been true love if it hadn’t come from the heart – and be returned from another. ” The wizard insisted, with a chuckle and a knowing look at their held hands.<br/>
Fili and Kili were never seen without the other, though their hobbit neighbors had been overjoyed when whatever had caused Kili to ignore Fili for so long had finally been resolved. Strangers to the Shire or not, no one could resist a good, proper ending.<br/>
And while this wasn’t where anyone had expected the two former royal dwarfs to end up, including themselves, it was a perfect place for happy endings none the less.</p>
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